Using Unicode in Catalyst Applications

There are two aspects to using Unicode in your Catalyst apps:

1. having Unicode in the TT files - you need to prefix them with the BOM
2. putting Unicode strings in the stash - simply add "Unicode" to the list of plugins that your Catalyst application uses.

Using Unicode - Catalyst::Wiki

Most amazing disk data recovery ever

It was one of the most iconic and heart-stopping movie images of 2003: the Columbia Space Shuttle ignited, burning and crashing to earth in fragments.

Now, amazingly, data from a hard drive recovered from the fragments has been used to complete a physics experiment - CXV-2 - that took place on the doomed Shuttle mission.

Columbia's fragments were painstakingly and exhaustively collected. Amongst them was a 400MB Seagate hard drive which was in the sort of shape you think it would be in after being in an explosive fire and then hurled to earth from several miles up with a ferocious impact.

Blocks and Files - Columbia HD Recovered

If you're a client of mine, you can access your account right here.

I'm currently available for:

* graphic design & branding
* web design, development and consulting
* social media consulting
* video production and distribution
* writing: journalism and copy

Justin Ruckman

CSS Rounded Corners — Using only one image file!

There are lots of tutorials on this subject, yet most of the one’s you see require the use of four separate images, which means a lot of fiddly photoshop work; cutting, pasting, naming and saving — all times four.

This method will still need four divs, but it will utilise just one non-symmetrical image, aligned (i.e. not split) as indicated in this diagram:

tom’s weblog » Blog Archive » CSS Rounded Corners

United States Navy Electricity & Electronics Training Series - NEETS*

* These files are Adobe Acrobat files that are 100-400 pages in length and depending on your ISP connection speed may take some time to open. You can also save these files directly to your computer without opening them by right-clicking on the link then select "Save Target As". All text below is copied directly from the forward that is in each NEETS manual:

The Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series (NEETS) was developed for use by personnel in many electrical and electronic related Navy ratings. Written by, and with the advice of, senior technicians in these ratings, this series provides beginners with fundamental electrical and electronic concepts through self-study. The presentation of this series is not oriented to any specific rating structure, but is divided into modules containing related information organized into traditional paths of instruction.

The series is designed to give small amounts of information that can be easily digested before advancing further into the more complex material. For a student just becoming acquainted with electricity or electronics, it is highly recommended that the modules be studied in their suggested sequence. While there is a listing of NEETS by module title, the following brief descriptions give a quick overview of how the individual modules flow together.

I wish I knew circuit shenanigans. This is apparently a good way to learn.

Davidson College Instrumentation Specialist - NEETS

Camel POOP

Most people are not aware of the fact that Perl has support for object-oriented programming. If you've used another object-oriented programming language such as Java or C or been exposed to object-orientation, then object oriented programming in Perl is nothing like that. To do real useful object-oriented programming in Perl, you only need to use three simple rules as put forth by Larry Wall in Object Oriented Perl.

CodeProject: Perl Object Oriented Programming. Free source code and programming help

Perl Design Patterns

or, Chicken Bones for the Voodoo Programmer Soul

Perl Design Patterns is a free on-line book and forum. For information about this project and links to download the entire book, see Home Page. Downloading is highly recommended unless you're contributing to the project. Wget users - fetch TinyCGI:download.cgi or TinyCGI:perldesignpatterns.zip instead, and see Home Page for more info. Novices, intermediate programmers: "Object Nuts and Bolts" is for you. Scroll down.

Perl Design Patterns at Perl Design Patterns Wiki

What is Jungle Disk?

Jungle Disk is an application that lets you store files and backup data securely to Amazon.com's S3 ™ Storage Service.

* Store an unlimited amount of data for only 15¢ per gigabyte
* No monthly subscription fee, no startup fee, no commitment
* Your data is fully encrypted at all times
* Data is stored at multiple Amazon.com datacenters around the country for high availability
* Access files directly from Windows Explorer, Mac OSX Finder, and Linux
* Automatically backup your important files quickly and easily

Unlike other services, with Amazon S3 ™ there is no minimum and no maximum amount of data you can store. You pay only for the actual amount of storage you are using.
Compare example Amazon S3 ™ pricing with other online storage services:

JungleDisk - Reliable online storage powered by Amazon S3 ™ - Jungle Disk

The Exceptional Performance team has identified a number of best practices for making web pages fast. The list includes 34 best practices divided into 7 categories.
Filter rules by category:

* content
* server
* cookie
* css
* javascript
* images
* mobile
* all

1. Make Fewer HTTP Requests
2. Reduce DNS Lookups
3. Avoid Redirects
4. Make Ajax Cacheable
5. Post-load Components
6. Preload Components
7. Reduce the Number of DOM Elements
8. Split Components Across Domains
9. Minimize the Number of iframes
10. No 404s

Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site

I first saw Yahoo's 13 Simple Rules for Speeding Up Your Web Site referenced in a post on Rich Skrenta's blog in May. It looks like there were originally 14 rules; one must have fallen off the list somewhere along the way.

1. Make Fewer HTTP Requests
2. Use a Content Delivery Network
3. Add an Expires Header
4. Gzip Components
5. Put CSS at the Top
6. Move Scripts to the Bottom
7. Avoid CSS Expressions
8. Make JavaScript and CSS External
9. Reduce DNS Lookups
10. Minify JavaScript
11. Avoid Redirects
12. Remove Duplicate Scripts
13. Configure ETags

It's solid advice culled from the excellent Yahoo User Interface blog, which will soon be packaged into a similarly excellent book. It's also available as a powerpoint presentation delivered at the Web 2.0 conference.

I've also covered similar ground in my post, Reducing Your Website's Bandwidth Usage.

But before you run off and implement all of Yahoo's solid advice, consider the audience. These are rules from Yahoo, which according to Alexa is one of the top three web properties in the world. And Rich's company, Topix, is no slouch either-- they're in the top 2,000. It's only natural that Rich would be keenly interested in Yahoo's advice on how to scale a website to millions of unique users per day.

Coding Horror: YSlow: Yahoo's Problems Are Not Your Problems